


The Chase

by Fenix21



Series: Songs from the Heart [1]
Category: Leverage
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-14
Updated: 2014-09-14
Packaged: 2018-02-17 08:12:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2302721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fenix21/pseuds/Fenix21
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Songfic inspired by Christian Kane's 'The Chase'</p>
<p>Eliot started chasing her to bring her back home to the team, but ended up finding her for himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Chase

**Author's Note:**

> This piece still feels and little rough and broken to me, but the characters it's about are also rough and broken, so I decided to leave it as is.
> 
> I own nothing, just borrowing for a bit.

"Dammit Hardison!" Eliot spun the wheel and slammed to a bone jarring halt in the empty parking lot of an abandoned truck stop. He put a hand to his ear. "I thought you had us all low-jacked!"

"I promised I would never do that!" Hardison protested over the comm. 

"Helluva time to decide to keep your word," Eliot spat and spun the wheel back, revving the engine and peeling back onto the highway. 

"Wait! Where're you headed?" Hardison yelled.

"South."

"But the last place I can find her was back twenty miles the other direction!"

"She's going south."

"How do you know?"

"I just do." Eliot pulled the earbud out, flicked it off with a fingernail and tossed it in the the glove box. 

The sun was starting to go down. The US-Mexio border was five hundred miles away and she had a twelve hour lead on him. If she got to South America, she'd disappear. It was one continent he'd never traveled, not that he couldn't track her. It would just make the going slower and she'd gain more of a lead in territory she was more familiar with. 

Eliot slammed the flat of his hand into the steering wheel. "Why, Parker?"

Everyone had assumed it would be Eliot who ran first, even Eliot himself. He wasn't a long term sort of guy. He considered it after nearly every job, especially the ones that didn't go according to plan. He protected them, but he was a danger to them, too. His past would always be trailing him, no matter how far down Hardison buried it; and well, let's face it, Eliot was a walking weapon.  There was no telling when he would go off on one of his own. 

But Parker? Sure, she was a loner, and there was no question that there was something wrong with her—Eliot reminded her every day—but she had been settling in pretty well as far as he could tell. She and Hardison had even started making a go of it, slowly, but still it was progress. 

Eliot drove until well after sundown. He'd been up over thirty-six hours, though, and while he could go up to seventy-two without any sleep it was pushing his luck with nothing to keep him company but the long broken yellow lines of the highway. He made it across the the Texas border and pulled off at a road side motel. There was a bar next door. 

He got a room for the night, stuffed the key card in his pocket and went next door. What sleep he could get would come easier with a little nudge.

"What'll you have?" The bartender asked. 

"Bourbon, double."

The bartender poured the deep amber liquid in a glass and turned away. 

"Hey," Eliot stopped him. "You seen a woman in here?"

The bartender rolled his eyes. Eliot tried again. "I mean...a blonde. Yay, tall?" He held up a hand to about Parker's height. "Usually wears her hair in a ponytail, dresses in black?"

"Man, you're describing most of the clientele," the bartender said. 

"Right."

"What's she to ya?" he asked. 

Eliot stared at the man. What was Parker to him? He hadn't thought about it really. She was...twenty pounds of crazy in a five pound bag. She was the best thief he'd ever met. She was naive and conniving all at the same time. She was innocent in a way that made him want to keep her safe from all the really bad things in life even though he knew she'd already come face to face with a lot of the worst already. She was...a bright spot in a life that was mostly made up of dark shadows and clouded memories and nights full of whispers from the past. 

She'd made an effort to make those nights more bearable. In her own weird sort of way. 

Eliot was serious about security. It was what kept him alive. So, naturally his own apartment was pretty well safeguarded. Parker, however, walked in like it was a trip through Candyland. She was grinning from ear to ear, sitting on his kitchen counter the first night she'd broken into his place, when he came out of the bathroom hair dripping and wearing nothing but a towel slung low around his hips. 

He'd just stood in the middle of the room staring at her sitting there cross-legged, twirling her bag of lock picks around her finger. He hitched the towel up an inch, pushed his damp  hair back out of his face and went to the fridge, grabbing two longnecks. He popped the tops and handed her one. 

"What're you doin' here, Parker?"

She sobered up fast, the playful grin vaporizing, her eyes taking on that intense look she got when she was about to embark on a mission into the land of feelings, territory she was as yet very unfamiliar with. He had to take another swig from his bottle to try and keep from laughing at the comically serious look on her face.

Instead of speaking, though, she unfolded herself from the counter, put her bottle down and came to stand in front of him. She touched his side with gentle fingers. He sucked in a breath, almost spitting out his beer. She paused a moment, but then trailed her fingers over the purpling bruise that covered most of that side. Quinn had done quite a number on him, much as he hated to admit it. 

“Hurt?” she whispered.

“Yeah,” he rumbled. She smiled a little at the vibration the sound made against her fingertips and moved on to the next batch of bruises at his shoulder, followed a path of shallow cuts to his jaw, and cupped her hand there turning her mossy green eyes up to meet his transparent blue.

“Parker…”

Her smile trembled. He watched her eyes start to fill, but they didn’t brim over. She didn’t cry. He’d never seen her cry. He put his hands on her shoulders, felt the low level tremor through her whole body.

It had been a hell of a day. They’d nearly had their asses handed to them. They’d discovered one of their own was playing them, and it made them all edgy and a little paranoid. 

Parker didn’t handle feelings well. It was ground she and Eliot shared, though he at least had a better handle on actually processing them, he just fell down when it came to the expression part. It was probably a big part of the reason she had always worked alone. She didn’t read other people well, and she couldn’t translate her own reaction to them any better.

She was shaking her head slowly now, eyes full of confusion while he held her. She opened her mouth to speak, but seemed to think better of it and shut it again. Eliot sighed and pulled her to his chest, wrapping his arms around her. She was stiff at first, but her muscles slowly let go in small groups until she was finally melded against him like she belonged there. She sighed, and he felt the moment she drifted off and sagged boneless against him. He shook his head in wonder, swung her up in his arms and carried her to his bed. 

She stirred a little when he laid her down but settled again when he stretched out beside her and pulled her back against him after donning a pair of sleep pants and a tank top. She snuggled up to him like a loving pet would to its devoted master, and Eliot was left wondering at what point she had found her little lock pickin’ way to his heart.

“Wow, sounds like quite the girl.”

Eliot’s eyes snapped up at the sound of the bartender’s low whistle. The glass in his hand was empty, his insides were pleasantly warm, and he shifted uneasily on his stool to find he’d been speaking any of that out loud.

“She…is.”

The bartender nodded, eyes narrowing a little as he surveyed the shorter man in front of him. He’d seen a lot of love sick guys plunk themselves down at his bar and sob out there stories over a collection of beers and shots, but this guy… This guy had eyes sharper than diamonds, bled danger, and looked like a piston under tension ready to blow sky high; but when he talked about that woman, everything about him changed. 

There was being in love, the bartender had discovered long ago, and then there was loving. One lasted a few weeks, months maybe, then kind of crumbled and fell apart and turned into the next pretty girl to walk through the door. But loving…loving lasted forever because it happened on every level, all over your body. It didn’t just happen in the heart. It didn’t just make your blood run hot. It kept you warm all day. It gave you a steady light to follow through the worst of times and rewarded you with sweet kisses and soft words at the end of the trail. It held you in the night and kept all the shadows at bay and welcomed you to the next day with a sleepy smile and rumpled hair.

This guy had the second kind bad. He was loving this woman something fierce.

He pushed Eliot’s change back to him across the bar top. “Hope you find your gal, man.”

Eliot nodded. Set his glass on top of the ten dollar bill and odd change and walked out of the bar.

 

The next morning, Eliot was on the road before the horizon turned pink. He’d slept about three hours. It was enough to keep him going for a while. The Charger raced through Texas to the southern border, eager in the pursuit, almost like it could feel Eliot’s anxiety and was translating it into speed. He wished momentarily he’d brought his truck, some of the going in Mexico might get a little rough, and Parker would see the orange Dodge from a mile away; but there was no help for it now. 

The road started to get a little blurry late into the afternoon and with a frustrated sigh he reached into the glove box and dug out the earbud. He slid it home and flicked it on.

“Hardison?”

“Eliot!” Hardison’s voice was loud in his ear after the long hours of silence, and he flinched a little. “Shit, man! I’ve been sittin’ here on pins and needles since last night. You find her yet?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

Eliot could hear the disappointment in Hardison’s voice, the worry, too. They both ran deep. “Hardison, what…What did she say to you before she left? Anything?”

“No, man. She just… We had a nice dinner. A couple of beers. We—,” he stumbled a bit.

“Yeah. Skip it. I get the picture,” Eliot said. “What else?”

“I don’t know! She fell asleep beside me. I woke up. She was gone!”

Gone. Just like that. No note, no word, no warning. 

Or had there been?

Hardison’s bed was not the last place Parker had been that night.

It had become a kind of game with them. Eliot continuously changed up and upgraded his security just to give Parker something new to get through. But that night… 

She hadn’t come over for a long time. Things had been good lately, and she and Sophie had been working pretty hard on her whole emotional ‘thing.’ She was making progress as far as he could tell. He figured between that and Hardison, she probably didn’t need him anymore.

So, Eliot had been surprised when he answered the knock at his door to find Parker standing in the hallway. She was fidgety and trembling, a lot like the first night she’d broken in. He invited her in, got them both beers, and settled on the couch beside her.

Normally, she would immediately snuggle up to him, like a cat, just commandeering any and every part of his warm body she could reach. But tonight, she almost shied away. She rolled the beer bottle in her hands, but didn’t drink it, finally set it on the coffee table. He reached absently and moved it onto a coaster. It didn’t even make her crack a smile. She didn’t notice.

They didn’t normally talk. Neither of them were very good at it after all. They were similar creatures and communicated in ways reserved to their own kind. It all happened on a more basic sensory level; but he had a feeling that tonight things were going to be different. He set his beer beside hers.

“Parker. Talk to me.”

Her eyes shot up to his, and her entire body sagged in momentary relief at his words. “Yes!”

He waited, but she said nothing more. “Parker, what’s going on? Is everything all right?”

“I slept with Hardison.”

Eliot processed that. He almost expected it to make him jealous, though he’d been waiting for it for quite a while to be honest. Parker’s feelings for Hardison had been coming more and more into focus for her recently, but she was strangely good at compartmentalizing and nothing she felt for Hardison bled over into what she felt for Eliot and vice versa. He was comfortable with what they had. They both were. He didn’t need anything more. In Parker’s mind, Eliot provided her one thing and Hardison provided her with another. That was that.

“He said he loved me.”

So, that must be what set her off. 

“Oh-kay,” Eliot said carefully. “And how does that make you feel? Are you okay with that?”

Parker stared at him, shock apparent on her face, confusion in her eyes.

“Parker?” He reached for her, but she jerked back. “Parker…if you’re worried about this…about us? I’m okay with it. This is okay. This is good.”

Parker jerked her head once, her eyes were filling up. Eliot frowned, bewildered. A tear slipped from the corner of her eye. Then another. And another.

He’d never seen her cry. She didn’t cry.

“Parker?”

“Why can’t you say it? After all this time…why can’t you say it?”

Eliot shook his head, confused. “Say what, Parker?”

She stood up suddenly, stared at him for a long moment, tears still streaming down her cheeks. She shook her head slowly, but said nothing, and then she was gone. 

Eliot ground his teeth so loud Hardison could hear it over the comm.

“Look, Eliot…I’ve been tracking you. What makes you think she’s in Mexico?”

“Just a hunch,” Eliot said. A memory really, of all of them arrayed in front of Hardison’s screens, a map of the Gulf taking center point. Hardison pointing out a formation off the Yucatan. 

“Scorpion Reef,” he said and mock shivered. “Sounds creepy. There’s five little islands…” He ran them off, but Parker piped in at the last.

“Isla Desteradda,” she said, grinning. She nudged Eliot in his sore shoulder and her growled at her. “Good fishing. We should go sometime.”

Hardison had given her one of his how-in-hell-do-you-know-that-girl looks, and Eliot had just edged a little further away to keep his damaged body out of her reach. 

“So, this hunch of yours ends where?” Hardison asked in his ear. “Maybe I can check it out and see if I can pick up her trail.”

“It’s—,” Eliot started to tell him, but clamped his mouth shut. Parker hadn’t run after Hardison had said he loved her. She’d come to tell him, but she hadn’t been running. It wasn’t Hardison she wanted to find her. It was Eliot. She’d run after he couldn’t say what she wanted to hear. But what had she wanted to hear?

“I’ll let you know when I get there.”

“Eliot—.”

Eliot flicked the earbud off and tossed it back in the glove box. His fingers clenched on the steering wheel. “What was it, Parker? What did you want me to say?”

He arrived in Progreso Merida around ten that night. He’d have to wait until morning to try and get a boat and a guide out to the Reef, presuming his hunch was right and this was where she had come. He found a little motel not far from the beach and got a room for the night. He walked across the street and down onto the sand where he found a little shack with brightly colored lights strung around it on poles and a sign proclaiming they served beer and tequila. He made his way to the bar and put down a ten dollar bill. 

“Tequila, por favor. Dos.”

Two shot glasses appeared in front of him. The bartender topped them off generously.

“Gracias.”

There was a bowl of limes on the bar, but Eliot ignored them and tossed both shots back straight, one after the other. The burn felt good. The bartender gestured with the bottle, but Eliot shook his head. He pulled his phone out instead and flipped to a picture of Parker, held it out to the man.

The man looked at the picture, smiled approvingly, glanced at Eliot’s troubled face and then pointed at the picture. “You look for her?”

“Yeah. Seen her?”

“No. Sorry.”

Eliot shrugged and pocketed his phone. Maybe he’d been wrong. She could have gone anywhere. She’d traveled almost as much of the world as he had. There was no really good reason to think this was where she’d head. It was just the first thing that popped into his head, so like with most of his hunches, he’d assumed it would lead him in the right direction. 

“She is—how you say—love of your life?” the bartender asked in stilted English.

Eliot’s razor sharp gaze jerked upward, making the little man stumble back half a step.

Parker? The love of his life? No. “No!”

The bartender shrugged and moved down the bar to wait on another customer.

Eliot stared into the empty glass in front of him. Love of his life? What would make him say a thing like that? Parker was his friend, his little sister, his…savior? Maybe. She provided him at least as much comfort during those troubled nights as he did for her. He’d come to expect her visits, could predict them almost to the minute, and missed them as they had dwindled off lately. 

He cared for her, sure. He cared for everyone on the team. They’d become his family. He looked after them. It was his job. But Parker…for Parker there was a little extra he supposed. He couldn’t imagine Sophie, or Nate, or Hardison taking solace with him. They didn’t speak his language. Not like Parker did. He and Parker were the same breed.

He stood up, swayed a little—it was pretty good tequila—and walked back toward the motel.

He paused at his door, key in the lock, to look up at the sky. There weren’t many lights on the beach. His motel was at the edge of the touristy part of the city, so the black velvet palette above him was laid out with a thousand jewels in glinting tones of topaz, sapphire, and ruby. A beautiful spread of colored diamonds. His lips twitched upward. Parker should be standing by him grinning madly, planning a cosmic scale heist just to possess that beauty above them.

He sighed loud and long and dropped his eyes. Maybe he should just let her go. The bartender’s words had shaken something loose deep inside him. He’d started this trip with a promise to Hardison that he’d get her back; find her safe and bring her home. But the trip was ending as a mission for himself, to retrieve the one thing in his life that he couldn’t live without. 

He pressed the heel of his hand between his eyes and swore softly. “Jesus, Parker, I—.”

“Eliot.”

Eliot whipped around. Parker stood behind him, hair plaited messily over one shoulder, dressed in a denim jacket and a tank top and colorful flower print skirt. 

“You found me.” She had a pack on her back—looked like it was packed for the long haul—and she shifted it on her shoulder as she stood looking at him.

“Yeah. Hardison sent…” He drifted off, shook his head, reached out with both hands to take her shoulders to be sure she was real. Maybe the tequila was better than he’d thought. But she was solid in his hands. “Yeah.”

 He stood and just stared at her for a long time. Too long. Her brow furrowed, and she finally reached to take his room key from his hand where it was caught between her skin and his and growing uncomfortably hot. He dropped his hands from her and let her unlock the door and let them both in. She dropped the pack under the window, shut the door with her foot, threw the lock, pulled the curtains. Then she took his hand in the near pitch black and walked them unerring to the bed, where she sat down and pulled him after her.

They sat in the dark and silence, her fingers twined with his resting in her lap. He could hear her measured breathing. She was waiting.

He sucked in a breath, let it out. Sounded too close to a death rattle. He flinched. Man, the tequila must be getting to him. Parker’s hands were still around his. So still. She never sat still. She was still waiting.

“Hardison said to tell you he misses you. He wants you to come home,” he said quietly. “That he…loves you.”

He could feel her nod in the dark beside him, but her breathing didn’t change. Her hands stayed nested around his firmly. The bartender’s words came back to him in the silence. 

_She is—how you say—love of your life?_

“I love you.”

Her breathing hitched, paused. Her fingers flexed around his broad palm. Her head bowed minutely, and he could feel her tiny mischievous smile, knew it would be there sure as his fingers found it when he reached up to touch her face, to turn it toward him and press the softest of kisses against her forehead.

“I know,” she whispered.

“Why, Parker?” he asked, voice rough and graveled. He planted more tiny kisses all along her hairline and then down the straight line of her nose. “Why?”

“Because I needed you to know you knew it.”

He laughed breathily, wrapped his free arm around her and pulled them both down to lie on their sides facing one another on the bed. That sounded so like her. 

She pulled his hand up between them, held it beneath her chin a moment and then bent her head to rub her lips against his scarred knuckles. “And I needed you to know how much it means to me; that no matter who else I ever love, I will always love you.”

“Parker, this is all I can give,” he whispered into her hair as he stroked it softly with his fingers, playing a little with the tendrils at her ears. “Everything I have.”

“It’s enough,” she said.


End file.
